As War Wanes, Pressure on Israelis Could Grow

With one hostile neighbor toppled and two more feeling heat from Washington, analysts say, Israel is more secure than it has been for some time but is liable to come under greater pressure to solve the enduring conflict going on in its own backyard.

The fall of Iraq’s Saddam Hussein was greeted enthusiastically by Israeli officials, who see his removal as a boon to their tiny country’s prospects for survival. The Israeli government has also welcomed recent U.S. warnings directed at Syria and, to a lesser extent, Iran.

Yet an awareness is dawning here that Israel, too, may now be in Washington’s sights. To help placate allies and Arab nations angry over the war in Iraq, the White House is eager to push ahead with a new initiative to bring peace to Israelis and Palestinians, who are locked in a 2 1/2-year-old face-off that has claimed hundreds of lives on both sides.

That is likely to mean increasing diplomatic pressure on the government of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to ease its crackdown on the West Bank and Gaza Strip and commit itself to a U.S.-backed peace initiative after the blueprint is officially unveiled, perhaps as early as next week. Reports say the plan calls for concessions from both sides and the establishment of a provisional Palestinian state in 2005.

“Now a great deal is up to us,” Matan Vilnai, a retired general and a member of Israel’s parliament, told Israeli radio Friday. “A stage has begun of a diplomatic process that is the only chance of reaching a true resolution of the conflict between us.”

Hope is building here that peace might actually be possible -- a cautious optimism born of a lull in major hostilities between the two sides and relief at having come through the Iraq war unscathed, in spite of concern that Israel would be a target for Hussein’s missiles.

An international conference in Madrid followed the conclusion of the 1991 Persian Gulf War, which altered the balance of power in the Middle East. The meeting paved the way for the next several years of progress, including the 1993 Oslo accords between Israel and the Palestinians and the 1994 peace treaty between Israel and Jordan.

With the Iraqi leader ousted, a prime advocate of military operations against Israel is gone -- a sworn enemy who gave cash rewards to the families of Palestinian suicide bombers and others killed in the Israeli-Palestinian violence.

So far, Israelis appear not to be worried that they might be the target of postwar retaliatory attacks. People have put away their gas masks and ripped off the tape that sealed their windows. Thousands of Israelis have been out enjoying the spring sunshine of the last few days, although their freedom comes at the expense of the Palestinians, who have been forbidden to leave their towns and cities during the weeklong Passover holiday.

At the same time, a relative calm prevails on Israel’s northern frontier, where troops and weaponry are massed to deter an attack out of Lebanon by the Syrian-backed radical group Hezbollah.

“I’d say we’re much more secure than any time in the past three years,” said Gerald Steinberg, a professor of politics at Bar-Ilan University.

Despite such confident assessments, many in the Arab world believe the U.S. waged war against Iraq to control its oil and to protect Israel, and anger at this could boil over into extremist acts against the Jewish state.

To bolster the country’s security, Sharon has publicly urged the U.S. to keep up its tough talk on Syria, which the Bush administration accuses of harboring terrorists and fugitive officials of the deposed Iraqi regime.

In a newspaper interview this week, Sharon said the White House ought to demand that Damascus end its support of Hezbollah and help disarm two other militant organizations, Hamas and Islamic Jihad. The Israeli leader stopped short of suggesting military intervention but said the U.S. should pull both economic and diplomatic levers to get Syria to comply.

“The best way is to start politically and, if it doesn’t produce results, then go on to economic [measures],” Shimon Peres, a former Israeli foreign minister and usually a critic of Sharon, said in a telephone interview Friday. “I don’t think anyone’s anxious to start a war.”

Syria represents a danger to Israeli security that is comparable to, if not greater than, that posed by Iraq under Hussein. Damascus boasts a significant arsenal of missiles capable of hitting Israeli targets, and it has been accused by the U.S. of possessing chemical and biological weapons, which it denies.

Iran is believed to be working on a nuclear program and missiles that could reach Israel.

“Even if Iraq is closed down, if Syria and Iran continue and maintain their weapons-of-mass-destruction capabilities, Egypt and Libya will follow in a short period of time and the situation will be out of control,” Steinberg said.

Syria counters that Israel, as the region’s only nation with nuclear capabilities, ought to be subjected to the same restrictions on weapons.

While Sharon has tried to exert subtle pressure on Washington, Israeli officials have denied being pressured in return to make conciliatory gestures toward the Palestinians, including a pullback from parts of the West Bank, which Israeli troops have occupied for a year.

Officials said that at a meeting this week between a Sharon envoy, Dov Weisglass, and White House officials, Israel proposed taking steps as a way to show good faith toward the Palestinian side. These measures include lifting restrictions on movement, releasing tax revenue due the Palestinian Authority, releasing some Palestinian prisoners and withdrawing troops from limited areas to see if Palestinian security forces can prevent terrorists from slipping into Israel.

Sharon has also agreed to meet the new Palestinian prime minister, Mahmoud Abbas, as soon as he is sworn in and his Cabinet confirmed, which could happen over the weekend.

The U.S. is waiting for Abbas, who is considered a moderate, to announce his ministerial lineup before Washington unveils the peace initiative, which was drafted by the U.S., U.N., European Union and Russia.

Perhaps sensing the growing pressure for progress, Sharon last weekend made his most explicit pledge yet to dismantle some Jewish settlements in the West Bank.

Sharon told the Haaretz newspaper that “painful concessions” lie ahead. That is similar to statements he has made in the past, which critics say were not followed by meaningful action.

But even some skeptics say they detect a difference in Sharon’s tone this time, an acknowledgment of the new circumstances brought about by the U.S. victory in Iraq, the appointment of Abbas, and a renewed desire by ordinary Israelis and Palestinians for peace.

“Something is happening. Never before from the opening of the intifada have there been so many [grass-roots] meetings between Israelis and Palestinians,” said Menachem Klein of Bar-Ilan University. “It signals something. The mood is different.”